That would be so cool

In games there are few things cooler than getting something new. In video games like new guns in Ratchet and Clank or new items in Animal Crossing. In board games you can buy extra abilities in King of Tokyo or resource cards in Settlers of Catan. These things keep the game exciting and change the way that you play.

A few weeks in and there are now two items in our classroom game. The bronze sword and the goblet of champions. The sword I classified as a weapon. All weapons can be used during battle games. They will give your team points in the game and/or effect other teams. For example, the bronze sword is worth 50 points and the user can choose a team that has to skip a turn.

The goblet is an item. Items are for use in other areas of our game. They can increase the XP students receive, who is showing work on the board, and even the questions being asked in class. The goblet of champions allows students to increase the XP they receive for an activity by 10%. This will come in handy during activities like dungeons and boss battles that reward students with higher experience points at the end.

Because of our busy schedule and snow days we have only been in our game for about a week. We played our first battle game two weeks ago. During the game a student looked at me and said, “Mr. Renard, can I use my sword now?” I told him sure. “It’s in my locker, can I go grab it?”

“Nope. You have to have it.” This was a good teaching moment. I explained to the students that if he had brought the sword to class that would have changed the whole game. Several students made comments about how cool that would have been. They were right. Items create moments, and there are plenty to come.

Battle Game #1: Envelopes

What is a Battle Game? Well, in short, it is me taking a worksheet and applying that practice to a game that we play in class allowing students to reap rewards towards Quest for the Shards of Light while practicing our current skills. For our first game, we played variation of a game I had seen several places before. In this game, the students complete a problem on the board. I watch as they work quietly until everyone at their table is in agreement, then they raise their hands. I mark down their order before I check answers, this way I don't miss who was next. Then I check their work to be sure each member of the group has worked it out to the correct answer. Beforehand, I tell them that if their clan is incorrect they will drop to the back of the pack, while they fix the problem.

Once the answers have been verified, we move over to a table containing 5 to 7 envelopes. I explain that in the envelopes there is one 50 point card. The cards to its right or left decrease by the same amount, so let's say they are 40, then 30's, then 20's and so on as needed (see the picture below). The clan that finished first picks first. They open the envelope and we record their score. From here there are two ways to play. One, they can leave their score card to share what they have then you can allow other groups to attempt to use those clues to solve the puzzle. The other way you can play is to let students leave a sticky note with either a truth or fib written on it. They can choose to help the next team, or not.

After five to eight rounds the totals are tallied for the last time and students reap their rewards. For this game, I gave the top three a training badge and some extra Class XP. The winning team also received our first special item; The Goblet of Champions. This closing reward is something that I am going to be playing around with as we go.

The experience was really fun across all of my classes. There were memorable comments, great teamwork, and a lot of agonizing over which envelope to pick. The last aspect that my students won't find out about until Monday is that I will be posting classroom world records for each of our battle games. That way, when I need to recycle a game to use there is an added incentive to be excited about.

Finding Our Feet...Stupid Snow/Testing/Holiday/Dr. Appointment

Oh man. It just got real.

I put up the first leaderboards in my classroom today, and you would think it were an episode of Saved By the Bell where all the students were checking to see what role they got in the big play (which, oddly enough, is not a picture I can find on Google). It was a much needed shot in the arm.

The thing was, it wasn't supposed to take this long. We started this experience the day we got back from Christmas Break and we had two days. Then, over the weekend, we got snow which put us out of school on Monday and Tuesday. After that my students needed to complete a two day standardized test. The next day I was out for a routine doctor's appointment...right before a 3 day weekend. Consequently, this is also why the writing has been a tad slow. Sorry.

That said, those leaderboards really brought this home. Kids quickly looked for their own names, asked who others were, and vowed to catch or surpass friends. Today, participation was up. Several students wanted to volunteer multiple times, and it wasn't the same who were doing things previously. I also saw encouragement from other, less brave members of the clans.

Watching them figure some of the conventions of the game out is really cool. It is a trend that I hope continues as I introduce more and more into the classroom game. Tomorrow, our first class battle.

That Moment

I have always been someone who, upon hearing about a good education idea or product, has assimilated it into my classroom if at all possible. I am kind of a hoarder of best practices. Working in groups and coaching more than lecturing, sure. Incorporating something like Classflow or Google Classroom if the technology is available, that is a good idea for the 21 century classroom. Add hooks to material that, maybe doesn't excite your average 9 to 13 year old to draw them in, that makes total sense. Building toward larger, more real world problems? Yes, please.

All of this is just logical and, as research would suggest, good teaching in a post industrial country where we find ourselves now. How we teach kids to look at material is changing. Our classrooms are changing. Our learners are changing. So we must change too. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, connected teachers are everywhere, in every subject, at every level. Do not be afraid to look for them. You can find people who inspire you. People who spark ideas. People who make you put the book down and shout brilliant! Why haven't I been doing this all along!?

This community can produce that moment when you know you have found something that you should have thought of a long time ago, but you never allowed yourself to go there. For me, I knew I had to give this whole Gamify thing a shot when I read about boss battles. You see, in gaming, bosses are the big challenges at the end of a stage or area where you use all of the skills and abilities you have gained to take down what is usually some big, nasty, powerful bad guy or monster. Hmm. That's weird. Using all the skills gained in an area to take on a big challenge. Sounds just like our modern unit by unit breakdown.

So I am reading Explore Like A Pirate, and the author says that his kids don't take tests, they complete boss battles. You set the students up with an enemy on the board. It could be a historical army, the villain from the story that they read, or just a big angry looking knight with an intimidating magical glow. Assign the enemy a number of strikes needed to defeat it, my recommendation is whatever amount would be needed for the groups or class to achieve a benchmark score. Then let them rip. Students, as they get older, care less and less about reaching a benchmark score (with the exception of your highly motivated learners). But you tell them that Lowthar the Devourer of Babies and Puppies is here and every correct answer counts as a hit against him, most kids want to put the troll in the ground.

Did I mention the rewards? If your classes are in full on game mode, their character should be receiving a nice experience point bump, maybe a cool item to use in class, and/or a special boss based badge (say that three times fast).

This was the moment for me. I have been beating bosses since we unwrapped the Nintendo Entertainment System when I was 5 and that big old turtle-dragon-dinosaur Bowser came waltzing into my life. Why had no one in my life ever stuck that motivation in front of me? Moreover, why wasn't I doing it for my learners?! Well, here and no further. January 26th is our first boss battle, I will tell you all about it...cause that's what blogs are for. Go forth and be awesome!

Starting Slow: Not Overwhelming Yourself With New Classroom Concepts

As I said in my last post, Mr. Matera put forth a lot of great ideas to use in the classroom, each revolving around concepts used in modern video games and board games. There were incentives, strategies, projects, games, and ideas to enhance activities that we do all the time. I knew that if I jumped in both feet and tried to do it all, I would never get this ship off the ground. So I very intentionally looked at the four most basic things I could implement; badges, experience, a leaderboard, and items.

A Badge System
A few years ago I had heard of classroom badges. As someone who, for a short time, played a lot of Playstation games in search of gathering up all of the trophies in a game, I really relate to this topic. Students work to do objectives in the classroom that may or may not be specified. As a reward, they receive a small slip of paper with a picture on it that can be collected. If they gather a full set, they receive a bonus item. For use in the classroom.

This is an example of one of the pictures on the Training Badges that my students can earn. Finding art for these has been a lot of fun.

In my room, students can receive training badges and questing badges. Training badges are day to day activities like participation, teamwork, and maturity. Questing badges are for ungraded projects that students complete outside of class.

Experience Points and The Leaderboard
Badges and activities each have an assigned value. As the badges are earned students get the points associated. Earning 1000 points will boast their player level. This level will give them different perks and access to items and quests.

The leaderboard is to get those competitive juices flowing. The experience is tallied in a Google Spreadsheet. It took a bit to set up, but it was worth it. My first leaderboards will go up soon, so I will share more on that later.

Items
Matera expressed that when he started making items they seemed a bit shallow, just slips of paper that acted as homework passes and the ability to leave class a minute early (That matters so much to middle schoolers). Then when he turned the items in on the game, it really opened up what he could do. Items can affect the game in different ways. Students can get more XP, interfere with other teams during review games, and help out during boss battles (more on that later). They are also really fun to create. I will go into a lot more details as I give them out.

These are the four primary elements of my classrooms game. Starting slow is the key.

Game On

Over Christmas break, I had the opportunity to read the book Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners by Michael Maltera. It was a really amazing experience for me, as a life long gamer. I mean, I don't know if you know anything about me but here are the shelves my television sits on...

My (family's) growing Amiibo collection and slightly camouflaged PS4 and WiiU. 

While I had heard of gamification in the classroom, I had never really looked into it much because it was intimidating and I just got caught up with other ideas. However, as I read through the book I became increasingly excited. Maltera does an fantastic job of explaining all the game systems that he incorporates into his classroom. He lists the pros and cons of each concept, how to peek the interest of students who may not play a lot of games, and ideas; lots of ideas. For me though, I understood all of this. Experience points are something I have been earning in games since I was like 8. Playstation trophies, literally changed the way I played games for a few years making me want to try things I would not otherwise have done in games. Just yesterday, I got a new item in the Legend of Zelda that opened things up in a dungeon and made beating a boss so much easier. The question I kept asking myself was, why hadn't I ever considered doing this with my students?

A funny thing happened as I read the book though, the timeline kept moving forward. As I set out reading the book, I told my wife the earliest I would consider doing this was next year. When I read about the competition created by levels and leaderboards, I thought maybe it would be really good for standardized testing review. After the boss battle idea clicked, I put the book down and said, "The last nine weeks. The kids will need a good pick me up." My wife stopped reading her library book and playfully replied, "Shut up. Thursday. You will be doing this stuff in your room on Thursday." She was right. I conceded, finished the book, and had my four entry concepts ready to roll.

I introduced The Quest for the Shards of Light to my class on Thursday. Consequently, that was the same day I read about the blog for 30 challenge. So I have decided to use this space to reflect on our classes progress. If anyone is reading this, I hope you enjoy.  Join us on this quest.